the present

i found this the other day when i was going through my files. it is incomplete, but i think i may try and add to it.

It didn’t happen like she thought it would. Blood bounces on the ice, it doesn’t stick. She thinks back to all the hockey games she watched her brother play. Gloves off, masks tossed aside and punches thrown. The blood always bounced, then pooled in thick gel, dark like candy.

***

Sooz squats over The Body. Fingers twitch against the snow. She shivers and wipes her nose against her sleeve, pulls her stocking hat down further, and then stuffs her hands in the front pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. Her knees dig into her chest as she rocks back and forth onto her heels. Thick ropes of black red blood pull against the soles of her boots and try and keep her still, but lose their battle against her inertia. There is not much to be done now. The boys are gone. All that remains of their presence in the alley is a broken bottle, some large boot prints disintegrating into a bloody circle, a blood soaked ball cap, and this, this Body. They did this for her, or so they say. They told her this is the creep that tried to grab her in the bar. This is the creep that tried to rape her in the bathroom. Whether or not he is, Sooz can’t say. There is no real face to identify, and his clothes are torn and soaked in blood. When the cops come, they will have to search for his wallet, take his fingerprints, gather what they can of his teeth and check his dental records. There will be no open casket.
If there is a casket. Sooz is pretty sure The Body is dead, but she can’t be certain.
It is doing a pretty good imitation.

***

Even with most of his head gone, he is heavy. Sooz is not a tiny girl. She is thin, but not skinny. She’s taller than average, but not abnormally so. Regardless, the ice is thick in spots, and the lot is uneven. Her feet skid as she yanks The Body by the calves over the spare lot past the alley towards the railway bed. She’ll leave his pockets for the transients to poke through, and his boots for the hobos, but it’s taking longer than she anticipated, and she leaves bits of The Body behind as she goes a long. A little skull, a little gore, still fingers marking trails in the snow. Body this way! Sooz can’t help but grin with each yank and each scramble for purchase against the slick pavement. She slips and groans as the ice and snow resist her and her special package, gift wrapped and sent from the boys. Her new special present who followed her home, her new mess to clean up. At the edge of the ravine, she will push him. She hopes he will roll.

when you hit me and when i saw stars.

There are all these painful and bright moments that snap like lightening or punches in the face. Your nose crushes against your upper lip and oh shit, there you are and oh shit there you are again and that might be your blood or the bastard may have just split his knuckles. Either way, babe, you’re a fucking star. You’re my star and everything about you is bright and perfect, and destroyed, running black, and always running. Up, up and over the fence and up and fucking away, and my heart is racing, my lungs are burning and we are going the distance.

When I dream of my brother he has your face. He is long dead and has your face, but he is smaller than you, and his features are slightly more delicate. Regardless it is always you at my door when I find myself asleep and in a place that doesn’t make sense. With what I imagine to be Matthew’s adult voice, you explain to me all the ways I’m ridiculous, and all the ways you will set me right, a fierce hand on my shoulder and a knowing look in your eyes that could be his. This is the way I will step and that way and we won’t dance, we’re not civilized enough for that. But we’ll step, toes crashing, elbows smashing ribs, your chin striking my forehead. Step one, step two, step five, it is all the same disaster. It’s our blood running out of a hundred different wounds.

It’s me waking up to nothing. A flash of light, a memory of lost breath.

teenage spaceship

…And I was wide awake and shaking, wondering what would become of you,
The cold autumn, pressing against the screen of my window, trying to snake its fingers through the cracks.

(I swore I heard your voice. I swore I felt your skin. I swore I would love you, but we never went into the circumstances of that.)

so it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut, dead at 84.

emily (incomplete)

While I sew you up, I realize this is the ugliest thing I had ever done, and I would like to be killed for it. You are no car, no stuffed doll, no robot, no iPod, no any sort of electronic device manufactured in Japan, or whose parts come from China or Taiwan, manufactured by immigrants somewhere in Los Angeles, and I am heart broken by my transgression.

“All for love,” I hiss, with every stab of the needle and every twist of the bit. “All for love.” My fingers are red, red, red, and your body hums hot.

***
I can’t tell you whose idea it was. I can’t. We are both there, we are both thinking it. None of us took it seriously, yet here we are, digging, with aching shoulders and burning hands. It’s getting colder and the weather burns our lungs while the whiskey chars our throats, our shoes ruined in the muck, in the mud.

Emily stops and winks at me. She fumbles around in the pockets of her wool coat for a cigarette, and finds a liquor bottle, which clinks against the chunky pewter rings on her pretty fingers.

“Here.” She grunts, tossing the bottle to me. I drop the shovel and take a swig, then toss it back. Emily catches it. She does not fumble. She is smoking like a movie star and she is acting completely normal, and it is fucking terrifying. “How deep have we dug?” I look up at her, and wipe sweat out of my eyes, pull my hair back. “Not deep enough.” I reply. She shrugs and looks away while I continue to dig. I’m not as drunk as I need to be for this, and I’m not drunk enough to accept that Emily isn’t drunk at all. Sitting there with her legs folded under her on the grass, smoking, and gazing up at the stars as I dig up her recently dead boyfriend. I feel very much like I am going to be sick. I feel very dirty. I feel as if I will never be clean again, and I know for a fact that it will only get worse.

“Alice,” Emily says, she startles me, and my shovel finally hits something, which startles me more. I am not holding on to my cool with any sort of firm grip. I am slipping. I need a drink. “What, Emily?” I ask her, trying not to sound irritated.

“Do you think he’ll know me?” I am going to be sick. “Christ, Emily, I-“ She looks at me. I hate it. I’m in love with Emily and I hate it. I hate this already. “Emily,” my voice sounds thick with tears, weakness. Emily despises weakness. “Emily, let’s go home, ok? Let’s go home and finish up the whiskey eh?” Emily turns away from me, and stubs out her cigarette in the ground. “Emily?” She stands up, and grabs my hand, pulling me out of the hole. “Get out.” She says blankly. “Emily, I-“
“Get out, go on. I thought you wanted to help me with this.” She drops down into the hole and keeps digging. I think this is insane. I expect very much we have both lost our minds at this point. I suspect we are both quite dangerous.

“Emily, no, I-‘ She looks up at me, and this is the first time I saw her cry. She didn’t cry when you died, she didn’t cry when you were dying, at least not that I ever saw, and she is crying and I am having difficulty imaging living much after this.

halifax in ten parts. (new and improved!)

When we were young and I was stupid and working in the Industrial Park.

That was the summer we made up our minds and suntanned in gray against the bright blue,
Not a tree in sight.
And you laughed that pretty smirk off the little Northender’s face.
Told her you didn’t care about the rape,
You weren’t ever concerned;
All those fingers like reaching daggers couldn’t even touch you.
You cared about proximity.
You cared about Life over her familiar shoes and her bad haircut,
And her boyfriend that made a living of being likeable and pretentious for lack of a job.
You were taller anyway,
While I was obsessed with the artistic works of others
Cranked behind a camera on a crooked tripod,
Two red headed girls striking voyeuristic poses and trying not to smile.
You were so proud of us then,
So brash,
So utterly disdainful of weakness.
So wonderfully shocking.

How I lived in the South Street YMCA

This is where we laid down
Took root like leeches,
Tightening our lynch pins and growing,
Growing old and fat
And we will creak like rigging when the wood contracts in the cool evening
After a long hot day under a terrible sun.
This late night lover will be the concrete beneath my shoulders.

It was this time last year I found you,
Under a bench, stuck to the bottom of my shoe,
Ah, but I was a different sort of beast then,
And you were a liar,
Drinking cheap wine, cheap everything out of old bottles,
Forties of Nova Scotian Golden Glow
Chased with Moosehead Dry Ice,
Snorting cut drugs in dirty bathrooms of dirtier bars, grinded in between sandwich plates.
Mouths in love with chewing gum,
Driving ourselves away.

When Your Sister Dated that Cape Breton Coke Head and You Swore You’d Kill Him.

“To learn the speech of a place, I-“
The vinyl seat sticks against her thighs and she is enthusiastic.
“By God, girls-“
He’s perfect and terrible, and she is beyond pregnant,
And we are listening to this glorious train wreck on the most crowded bus stuck in Barrington street traffic.
(bell)
A girl who used to be one thing but is quite something else now.
Her face looks picky and happy at the same time and her toes are nervous,
Advancing and retreating with each stop in her cheap sandals.

Meth face always reminds me of the fire down the street that stank of chemicals,
Ashes loaded into plastic buckets,
And a scalded cat, dead by the low brick building that belongs to Nova Scotia Power.
She was burning up
(She was burning up.)
She was falling to bits and scattering away before me,
Sticky bony fingers resting on her swollen belly,
Rings resting around that peeling, flaking skin.
“Married? Did you know?
“..I didn’t know.”
“And her with twins on the way…”
I can see what they pretend to ignore
In her eyes, her cheeks, her teeth, poking out under her flesh.
“Oh my God, girls-“
bell.
Oh my god.
Oh indeed.
(Your hands. Your face. Your eyes. Your skin. Oh my god.)

God Save the Queen

Mrs. Coxon comes in every Tuesday
And photocopies loyalist propaganda, which we never charge her for,
And then gives it to me
To give to my friends.
I stick it in my pockets,
Fill my purse up with pink and white and blue and yellow photocopies,
Then paste them in even lines around my room.
The Queen’s eyes accuse me as I sleep,
Sneak my hands around you,
But from behind these perfect rows of colour,
Are the old stains that they cover.
Old stains,
Meant for cover.

You Don’t Go to Gus’ for the Cover Bands.

I only noticed you because you were double fisting the undersized two dollar pints
Oh, and you had great sneakers.
The soapy tasting foam of Canadian coated your upper lip and it took everything in you to swallow it down,
All while standing too close to me,
You had to be the quick fix I was looking for
While I flavored my breath with gin.
The hipster trash too good to imagine.

When you breathe tonight, with long straight strokes,
Will you think of me?
(bump, slosh)
Unbroken, unexplored
(“Hey sorry, I didn’t mean to spill on you.”)
Unconcerned and un-conceived of .
(“Oh, it’s ok. It’s an old shirt. Ha.”)
Your rough palms on my back.
(“Of course.”)
Your bearded face buried in the crevice of my neck,
(“Do you like the band?”)
My breasts…
(“I know the keyboard player.”)
The cold.
(“oh.”)
The dark.
(“Yeah..”)
The tattooed, empty place,
Like Gottigen street windows.
But of course,
This is all imagined, our shoes piled together by my bed on the floor.
Our regrets disappearing like cigarettes in a full bar.
(“Do you like them?”
”Naw.”
“Me, neither.”)

How to Make Anarchist Friends Without Even Trying.

“I don’t wash but I get laid.”
And for what?
For all the products you can steal at the Superstore on Quinpool?
Your possessions are no more than your body’s dirt.
The smell on your skin of your free love girlfriend,
Unwashed hair,
Pot,
A sale bin rum and vodka combination,
Constantly warn denim and organic shoes
Toasted with a vegan diet and lightly curried,
Pinched from a bin downtown behind the Satisfaction Feast,
Yellowing teeth and spray paint,
And active inaction.
I am active inaction.
I am lumpy and smell faintly of dove soap.
I have only been wearing my jeans for two weeks straight.
I have dirty fingernails but no intention of sleeping with you.
(Cheese eater.
Animal hater.
Leather wearer.
Soap user.
Complacent-er.
Just you, me, and Lenin.)

Liturgy

so we let loose and let it be
like all you silences,
flying out into the night
arms flapping
mouths spitting and cursing and crying
grinning and snarling,
rejoicing at your passing.
we are all eyes
sailing through the air when you finally fade.

(shit.
fuck.
beautiful.
bless you.)

Hedonism and Healing

We always went to all the same places
And because of that
I suspect that falling in love with you was inevitable.
Practice makes perfect after all
And we all get used to things.
Like your legs around mine in the morning
Under the yellow light
By the drafty window, the heater cranking out a rhythm.
(god had made him so small compared to you, so small to send him away,
away, away.)

What We Did When We Discovered We Could Never Go Back.

We crawled out of the harbour,
Hardly recovered,
Knocking back and forth on our shaking zombie legs,
Clutching our chests to keep intact our biohazard hearts,
Slipping skin on slack faces,
Groaning gums,
Sucking our life from the dying.

We are the city.
Unreal city.
City apart and divided,
With no fog off the Thames to cover us,
Only the white ocean clouds
From an unending rain.
“No chance to dry out with all this damn rain.”
No chance to empty out our boots,
Wring out our socks,
No chance to live forever as we were before.
In these moments before we knew we were going to die,
And moments before we were determined to stay this way.
(All those North end apartments.
All those empty beer glasses.
All those vintage t-shirts.
All those moments lost to the flood.)

Halifax Explosion

“I was so stupid then.
So unimportant to the scene,
So BORING!”

Large laughs echo through the kitchen stuffed, and our speaker continues drinking out of her forty, exposing just enough of her tattoo.
You were so lovely,
So innocent,
So naïve,
So tiny and normal and perfect in your averageness
But you’ve left that all behind now for your early twenties, a pair of straight leg jeans and flat shoes.

So I left my coat and walked out onto North Street,
Past the school,
Onto Robie and towards the commons,
Passed the the broken bottles,
Away from the toxic harbour and the barren industrial park.
Along a neglected bus route I’d never taken,
By the leaning shack you used to squat in before it burned.
And I was
Gone.